


What Could Have Been (And Maybe Still Can Be)

by DreamHero



Series: The Hero of Dreams [1]
Category: Linked Universe - Fandom, The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Brief Mentions of Dream/Renia Backstory, Dream POV, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff and Angst, Gen, Hero Worship, Hero of Dreams, Introspection, Link does not have the Hero's Spirit, Link is not Link, Linked Universe (Legend of Zelda), Male-Female Friendship, Mentor/Protégé, Other Linked Universe Characters are Mentioned, Overprotective Twilight, Overprotective wildlife, Regret, Selectively Mute Link (Legend of Zelda), What-If, Wild (Linked Universe) Hero of Choice, Wild (Linked Universe)-centric, Wildling Hero AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-10-04
Updated: 2020-10-04
Packaged: 2021-03-08 00:20:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,408
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26806510
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DreamHero/pseuds/DreamHero
Summary: The newest Hero decides its time to have a few words with her 'predecessor'. What starts as a meaningless talk about their shared timeline and world soon dissolves into a much deeper and heated conversation about scars both thought long healed.....AKA the one-shot about what would happen in the alternate Timeline where Renia(now known as the Hero of Dreams) joins the Linked Universe gang and has a little talk with the Wildling.
Relationships: Four & Hyrule & Legend & Sky & Time & Twilight & Warriors & Wild & Wind (Linked Universe), Link & Link (Legend of Zelda), Twilight & Wild (Linked Universe), Wild & Dream, Wild & Wildlife, Wild (Linked Universe) & Original Character(s)
Series: The Hero of Dreams [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1955038
Comments: 18
Kudos: 176





	What Could Have Been (And Maybe Still Can Be)

**Author's Note:**

> This was a crazy idea that just hit me and wouldn't leave me until I wrote it. So I decided to share it with you guys!
> 
> Hope at least some of you guys enjoy this! :)
> 
> P.S. This work is heavily inspired by my work "Wildling". I did my best to make it understandable and readable without having the background knowledge from that work, but warning it might be a bit confusing.

Renia, or as she was now known, Dream, had been with the group of time traveling and space hopping Links for exactly 19 days. (She counted every sunrise, and though world shifts were hard, she did her best to guess how much time they gained or lost). She had been so surprised to meet them, so surprised to meet him again. A living legend, not a day older then how she remembered him through the haze of her most fond childhood memory. (She wondered if the time jumping stopped aging them, but the kid-Wind-had told her he had grown at least two inches since their mission started.)

She waited to see if he would remember her, if he would seek her out for a conversation she hoped they both wanted to have. But though he looked equally surprised to see her that first night along a long-forgotten road with the other Heroes, Wild did not approach her. He watched her, and Dream could feel his eyes follow her whenever she roamed about camp and sometimes even into battle. 

It felt like she was having to prove herself as a hero all over again. Like she was again just a nobody 16-year-old Shiekah girl, fighting against the elders to save their dying world against the lingering corruption of Malice, while no one listened to her because she _couldn't be the Hero_. 

Maybe Wild was warry because of what Dream stood for. She was the second Hero. There had never been two Heroes at one time before. Two Chosen Heroes of Hylia. Though Dream had learned the truth about her predecessor during her journey, she never told anyone the twisted lie she carried in her deepest heart. She knew he had never told the group, so she couldn't confront him in front of the others without spilling both of their deepest secrets. But what made it worse was that Dream had to fight, to crawl, and climb her way to the title of Hero she was always born to fill, while Wild had so easily filled it without any help or destiny aiding him. 

She hated him. Hated the hero who left without a trace, without a single explanation as to why. He was there one day and simply gone the next. Her world-their world fell into chaos within months after the disappearance of the one person who single-handedly held it together. And Dream had to pick up the pieces.

So Dream corners the "Hero of the Wilds" one evening in a Hyrule none of them know. Away from camp, away from the other heroes and their nosey prying eyes and ears. Away from Time's piercing judgmental look, Four's weary gaze, Wind's curious stare, and Sky's pitying glances. She knows she's not yet trusted. She's not blind. She sees the way Legend watches her like an enemy to be analyzed instead of an ally, sees the way Warriors sets up guard shifts so she's always with two other members, sees the way Hyrule heals everyone else before her, sees the way Twilight is always at Wild's side and whenever she moves near them how he actively keeps her away from Wild like she’s going to jump him. She's angry, but she's a Hero too. The worst Wild will get is a black eye and a bruised ego.

"I remember when I met you as a kid." She blurts, cringing at her own terrible conversation starter.

Wild glances over at her from where he's picking up firewood. There's a confused and suspicious look on his face, but he does nothing more than hum lightly and continues his assigned task.

"I wasn't even 6 yet," Dream laughs, hating the way it sounds so forced. Wild looks up at her again, confusion still glittering in his impossibly blue eyes, but now they also shine with memories and a question. "Yeah, I was quite the problem, kid. Caused my moms' years of gray hairs." 

Wild doesn't laugh at the joke, only watches. He only ever watches the others, monsters, her. He's always separate, always above (sometimes figurately and literally). It drives Dream mad. This was the man who single-handedly saved her world and then abandoned it to go play the hero in other people's worlds.

"I used to blame you, for disappearing, for leaving. You were our hero. And you just left." The words ring with far more truth then Dream wanted them too and it makes her stomach twist and knot. She didn't mean to say all that. Wild's eyes are widening, a look of understanding seeming to dawn on his too soft features. Dream doesn't want understanding. She wants answers. She wants to know why he left them.

"I was here helping-," Dream doesn't let him finish whatever stupid short excuse he was going to give. Because that's the exact problem, he went somewhere else, to help somewhere else, to help someone else.

"But what about our Hyrule?! What about our home?! Our family and friends and land?! Did they not need your protection too?!" She knows she shouldn't be shouting, that they really aren't that far from camp, and at any moment, Twilight could burst through the trees in his over-protective wolf mode and start growling at her for insulting his protégé. But Dream is too angry, too full of all the things she never said, all the doubts and fears, and secrets she had to keep buried as a hero, because heroes are perfect and stoic and exactly like Wild, and she was too reckless, loud-mouthed, and brash.

Wild looks startled at her outburst, crystal blue eyes wide, and impossibly pale hands tight on the buddle of twigs in his arms. If Dream was thinking even slightly more clearly she would realize he looked afraid.

"You were our hero Link! You were my hero! Did that not mean anything!?" 

"Renia-," Wild moves to step closer, to reach out to her, like she's still the 6-year-old naïve Sheikah girl Wild first meet, but she slaps his hand away with an audible and painful "CRACK!" 

"It's Dream." She snarls, and she feels no guilt for the way Wild recoils. The way he instinctively drops the wood and it goes scattering around his feet, like a broken bridge never built. She doesn't notice how the forest falls deathly silent, how the wind picks up from a gentle breeze into a strong gust.

"Dream…," Wild starts slowly, holding the hand she slapped close, eyeing her like he's worried she'll pounce. Dream's not sure she won't. "I'm sorry," And that's probably the worst thing he ever could have said, the rage grows red hot in her blood, she doesn't want apologies, she wants answers damn it! "I did what I thought was right." 

"Hyrule fell just months after you left!" She roars, and she ignores the way the trees shake even though the wind still stays a mild forceful breeze. Ignores the sound of distinct animal calls growing louder and closer. Ignores the way Wild starts to look around with something bordering on panic. "You kept Hyrule alive and safe and you just left! You're supposed to be our Chosen Hero!? Did our love and support mean nothing to you!?" she continues to yell, and she ignores how Wild's jaw tightens, how he tenses at the words like they are a physical blow. "You thought abandoning us was right!?" 

Dream sees the moment he snaps, his eyes refocus on her with an intensity that's almost burning, and Dream almost wants to take all her words back as the forest shudders around them and the night air almost becomes impossible to breathe, "It was you or me, I made my choice." 

Dream freezes. Her mind whirling. She can see Wild's face tense, a look of regret flash across his features, as he sinks into himself and away from her. The trees shake gently above them, and with a skittering of sound, a tiny horde of forest creatures race out of the nearby trees and circle Wild. He doesn't pay them any mind, just keeps his wide eyes glued on Dream. 

The night is so impossibly quiet, and Dream's brain doesn't want to work correctly. Wild would have never told her if she had provoked him, hadn't forced him into a corner. But her anger was gone now. Her long-simmering rage and hate towards the fake hero who abandoned her land was washed away like a piece of driftwood in a storm. She just felt empty, hollow, and impossibly sad.

"Look," Wild says with a sigh, folding deeper into himself as a squirrel races up his leg to nestle into his shoulder and a doe buts her head against his elbow. Dream hates how small and breakable he looks in this moment. This isn't the hero she remembers from her memories; this isn't the hero she grew up hearing stories about, this isn't the man she grew up hating all her life. "It's not your fault. I made my choice Re-Dream. I couldn't let a child be a soldier." 

That hurt more than any deflection could have because it was true. Dream always did blame herself somewhere. When she learned that the other heroes came to her time to gather a new member, and Wild went instead. It should have been her. She was the one with the Hero's Spirit, the one holding the Triforce of Courage, the one blessed by Hylia. But Wild was always more than a hero then her, more than a hero than all of them combined. He wasn't bound by the will of a Goddess ensuring he was a hero, he just simply was. His goodness and kindness were all due to him simply being true to himself. He was just that good and pure of a person and it made Wild shine all the brighter. He was so loved, so needed, yet he couldn't even realize that the people of his own Hyrule missed him, couldn't even realize that the other Heroes he traveled with wouldn't even care that he wasn't blessed. Dream loved him, she never truly hated him, but hate was easier than the impossible sadness she felt before the anger came. 

But this trembling shaking man, surrounded by wildlife trying to comfort him - no he was barely even a man- he had only lived for about a year, and Goddess Dream was so cruel. The world and her Goddess so twisted to put this life through so much. She saw how he acted around nature, saw how the bird in his hair chipped a song, and a moth landed delicately on his nose causing him to smile. He was a completely different person. He was so happy and free. But around the group, _around her_ the persona of the Hero he had been forced to wear since his first breath was in full effect. Dream didn't want to think she had taken that happiness from him, had forced him into the role of Hylia's Hero, because she was too weak to fulfill her own destiny. 

In her training to fortify her mind to enter the dream world. Impa had her picture something that no dream eater or nightmare would ever be able to taint, something so powerful and pure and good, something that she trusted and completely believed in. For Kina, her sister it was the thousands of facts she had stored in her brain; for Deno, her little brother, it was their family; for her childhood friend Cottla it was Dream herself (something she never got over the embarrassment of); and for Lin, the stable boy the elders convinced themselves was the new hero, it was the Goddess. But for Dream it was the hero before her. 

The Nightmare Prince even mocked her faith in a false hero and showed her the nightmares Wild suffered during his journey to beat the Calamity, his doubts of being the real hero, and the crystal clear memory of her own face, of a happy innocent six-year-old Sheikah girl Wild had known was the next Hero, the crushing realization that his life was a lie. Dream's faith in Wild hadn't faltered. It grew and became so blinding strong that her faith alone in Wild was enough to end the Nightmare Prince. But the guilt and the ghost of the nightmares haunted Dream's own sleep every night since. 

After, in private moments, Dream would wonder at the possibilities of what would have happened had Wild not disappeared. Would he have trained her as a hero? Would he have tracked her down when he thought she was old enough? Or would she have to find him and prove to him she was worthy of being trained as the new Chosen Hero? Would he have been there smiling proudly at her when she first pulled the Master Sword? They were realities for other Renias, and she prayed to the Goddess they had better endings then she did. 

"Renia," oh, it's Wild. Right, she just yelled at him. Damn it, why was she always such a hot heated idiot. "I mean, Dream," he corrects, and Dream feels like she should mention that he's the only person that her title nick-name feels weird coming from. "I'm sorry I left. I never meant to. I had hoped I would be able to be back before long in our world. I apologize for any damage my absence has caused you or your people." 

Dream almost laughs, that's the longest sentence she's ever heard Wild say, and it's a formal apology for something he really shouldn't be apologizing for, but he was always the better hero, the better person. So Dream takes the olive branch offered to her and lets her pride win over her humility, "They are your people too, hero." 

Wild gives her a funny little smile, full of secrets and old knowledge that momentarily as Dream straightening her back a little higher, "my people are fine." 

Dream doesn't know what that means, but she feels like that's a question for another day. And the thought of another day with her childhood hero, of getting the chance to maybe have him teach her, of getting to know the man behind the façade, makes something warm and fluttery fill her chest. Dream thinks maybe traveling across space and time with past heroes won't be so bad. She could even get used to this whole saving the world business.

**Author's Note:**

> That was fun! If I make any more of these what kinds of scenes with Renia(or rather Dream) would you guys like to see? Do you guys even want or care about Dream? (you can be honest its okay!)
> 
> As always feel free to leave a kudos or comment below! Hope you guys liked it!
> 
> See you in the next story! :)


End file.
